Chevy Nova Chassisworks - It's Saturday Night

The Chassisworks Nova Is Back And Ready To Have Its Tubes Tied

It's back! That's right, the Saturday Night Special Nova is undergoing the next phase of its construction towards hitting the boulevards and quarter-mile. With a trick pair of HTP America machines (a Micro Cut 250 Plasma Cutter and their MIG 160) we're setting out to cut the stock floor and firewall and tie the front and rear tube subframes together.

In the long and storied history of project cars, few machines have drummed up as much fanfare as the Saturday Night Special Nova has. From mid-1997 through all of 1999, we featured a-dozen-and-a-half segments on the car being transformed from a basketcase into a state-of-the-art Pro Streeter. And you readers loved it. The little Deuce, which was built by Chris Alston's Chassisworks, is arguably responsible for kicking off a whole new cottage industry revolving around First-Generation Novas, and most certainly contributed to their skyrocketing increase in popularity. From its all-tube narrowed rear chassis to the revolutionary bolt-on NoFab front clip, this little Chevy II has a virtual cult following that continues to grow. (In fact, we published a handbook on Novas that included every stage of the initial buildup partly because our phones kept ringing off the hook from enthusiasts wanting to know how to get a segment that they had missed in SUPER CHEVY.)

Although the car officially left the Chassisworks complex in Sacramento, California, more than a year ago, it hasn't lost its momentum towards becoming one bad street/strip warrior. Original plans called for the installation of a blown 421-inch small-block, backed by a bulletproof Jerico four-speed gearbox, linked by a carbon fiber driveshaft to the Chassisworks Fab 9/Strange 12-bolt rearend. When the roller left Sacramento, it went into a sort of hiatus for a year while we decided what the next step should be. Through deadlines and other more basic projects, we mulled over the Nova's fate and decided that the next step, before assembling the entire car, should be to tie the front and rear frames together-essentially making it an all-tube chassis-and create a new firewall, transmission tunnel, and floor.

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As you'll see in the following photos, we began the process at home before getting an offer from the fabricating wizards at Hot Cars Cool Trucks in Las Vegas. While we'd have been comfortable doing the process ourselves, the fact that they had already completed a similar job on a customer's Pro Streeter, and were anxious to do it so we'd be able to photograph the story more completely, convinced us to load it on our H&H Hydra-load trailer and make the trip to Sin City.

While the choice to do this was spirited by the desire to create a true all tube-frame Pro Streeter, the fact is that the way the car was built at Chassisworks was more than strong enough to take whatever power combo we threw at it. And, if it hadn't been for the fact that the 38-year-old's sheetmetal floor was dented and ripped in more than a few places (we figured it must have gone over a curb or something in a previous life), we surely would have just put the car together and had fun with it. But, as they say, few project cars ever get finished, they only keep getting better.

After a conversation with the welding experts at HTP America, we ordered one of their trick plasma cutters and their popular 160 MIG welder and set out to cut and piece together our Nova's inner structure. With the simplicity of the HTP equipment, we embarked on the procedure ourselves, firing up the plasma cutter and getting half of the firewall and driver's side floor peeled away (just to prove that we could do it ourselves) before loading the car onto our H&H trailer and heading east to Las Vegas to Hot Cars Cool Trucks, where the staff of fabricating experts is intent on doing the job.

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Removing the steering column was the next step. This was the easy part.

Now, we don't want to give away all that is still in store for the Saturday Night Special. But for what's going to happen in the immediate future, we'll let you in on part of the plan: The goal is to have the awesome Chassisworks front and rear subframes tied together with round tubing and integrate them into the existing rollcage. From there, the wizards at Hot Cars Cool Trucks will move the engine mounts back a tad (lowering the center of gravity and the front-to-rear weight bias), fabricate an aluminum firewall and floor, and create a transmission mount. We'll also be installing a pair of oh-so-cool floor-mounted pedals and tubular seat mounts. To say that we're excited is an understatement. To say that we're looking forward to having the phones ringing with questions about the little boxy Chevy is, well.

But for the thousands of you who had been wondering where the Nova landed, we're happy to know that you'll be anxiously looking forward to next Saturday Night.

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Chevy Nova Chassisworks - It's Saturday Night

It's back! That's right, the Saturday Night Special Nova is undergoing the next phase of its construction towards hitting the boulevards and quarter-mile. With a trick pair of HTP America machines (a Micro Cut 250 Plasma Cutter and their MIG 160) we're setting out to cut the stock floor and firewall and tie the front and rear tube subframes together.

As you'll see in the following photos, we began the process at home before getting an offer from the fabricating wizards at Hot Cars Cool Trucks in Las Vegas. While we'd have been comfortable doing the process ourselves, the fact that they had already completed a similar job on a customer's Pro Streeter, and were anxious to do it so we'd be able to photograph the story more completely, convinced us to load it on our H&H Hydra-load trailer and make the trip to Sin City.

Removing the steering column was the next step. This was the easy part.

Then the stock brake/clutch assembly bracket was disconnected and removed. This will be discarded, since we plan to run a new set of pedals that will pivot off of the floor. If you're planning to do the same frame tie-in, you may want to save this piece and use the stock pedals.

After removing the front sheetmetal and engine, the first step we did was to set the car on jackstands. To be sure that the front clip didn't move on us after the floor and firewall were removed, we measured the distance from the garage floor and recorded it for future reference.

With all of the extraneous brackets and hardware out of the way, we fired up the slick little HTP America Micro Cut 250 plasma cutter and started slicing through the floor's sheetmetal. Since our original plan before deciding to take the car to Vegas was to do one side at a time, that's the approach we took at removing the floor section and transmission tunnel.

HTP's Micro Cut 250 made short order of the Nova's floor. The only problem we discovered is that where there was factory seam sealer we might get a little flame or fire started. An easy fix was to use a gasket scraper and remove as much of the rubber material as possible.

Our last cut inside the car was at the base of the firewall on the driver's side. From there, we turned the cutter's tip on to the firewall.

Once the majority of the firewall's sheetmetal (of the half we had planned to cut out) was removed, all that remained was the unibody's structural boss. Since we had left the front framerail mounted to the boss, all we had to do was loosen the fasteners and remove the hunk of metal.

Using a reciprocating saw, we cut off the 2x3 box frame connector, leaving just a stub on the rear crossmember. This will be ground down and smoothed out before the new frame pieces are welded in place.

We didn't forget to pull out all of the wire from under the dash, either.

With half the floor's sheetmetal gone, the Chassisworks frame connector was exposed. Note how it was still attached to some original flooring, and how it was welded in at an angle in order to line up with the factory unibody mounts. Our new frame section will run parallel with the rocker panels when tying together the front and rear frames.

Again, since our original intention was to do this at home and use rectangular box tubing to tie the frames together, we made this template using a 2x4 piece of wood. It worked perfectly. So, if you plan to tackle this job yourself, remember this trick. Just be sure to keep the car on a flat surface and don't let the front clip move in relationship to the rest of the car.

In our quest to complete this part of the project ourselves, as mentioned above, we chose some state-of-the-art welding and cutting equipment from HTP America. And while the MIG 160 and Micro Cut 250 are perfect for the home shop, we also took them to Hot Cars Cool Trucks for the fabricators there to use. And although we haven't yet got to use the MIG, we did assemble the wheels to make it easier for the guys in Vegas to roll it around.